Many of today’s feature phones are functional at best. These devices work, but they’ve lost many of the features they had in the past—plus much of the polish.

Over the past year and a half, I tried one Sprint phone (the Kyocera Verve), one from AT&T (the Cingular Flip), and one general GSM handset (BLU Diva Flex 2.4). I would have loved to have tried the Punkt phone, but thanks to its reliance on 2G, it wouldn’t pick up enough signal in my neck of the woods.

Each phone I tried felt janky in its own way: sloppy fonts, lazy design, bugs, and menu options that no longer work. To make matters worse, I had to deal with low talk volume and relatively quiet ringtones. The speakerphone was often barely audible.

I’m sure there are feature phone models that provide a better experience, but considering how few models there are in general, I’m surprised I’ve had to search this hard.

Many of my friends do happen to communicate via good old-fashioned SMS. But often, they send group MMS messages that my phone could not display in a threaded fashion. That meant I received messages individually, in separate threads, with no way to follow the conversation or respond back to the entire group.

3. A Dumbphone Means No Secure Messaging Apps

Not only have we changed the way we talked, but we’re also in the process of rethinking our concept of private and secure communication. After seeing just how much of our conversations companies and governments store, many of us have started to chat via encrypted messages.

While these apps offer varying degrees of privacy, they’re all more secure than SMS. But none of them are compatible with dumbphones. Relying on a phone that can only make regular calls and texts means you have no easy way to shield your conversations.

4. People Expect You to Have GPS Navigation

Finding people and places doesn’t take much effort these days. First you’re texting a friend, then they drop an address and you’re following on-screen prompts a moment later. When you’ve decided to meet with someone, it’s easy to find your way to where they are in the span of ten minutes.

What if you don’t have GPS navigation and instead ask your friend for directions? They might have no idea. My friends have no problem following a GPS to my house, but some aren’t knowledgeable enough about my part of town enough to connect where I am to where they are. And frankly, I don’t want to go back to writing instructions down.

This isn’t merely an issue with friends. People in general have come to assume that if they tell you where to go, you can quickly figure out how to get there.

5. I Could No Longer Open Links

While many people I know prefer to use one chat app or another, I can still communicate with most of them via a traditional SMS message. Yet over the course of a conversation, they’re likely to share a link. They want me to check out an article, or watch a video. With a dumbphone, I couldn’t.

I was surprised that this became an even bigger hindrance when shopping at a store. One time, there was a discount available if I registered for a coupon via text message. The problem was that the store sent me back a text with a link I had to click in order to confirm my registration. So much fail.

6. Smartphones Provide a Sense of Security

With a smartphone in my pocket, I feel secure to travel spontaneously. Wherever I go, I can find my way home. When visiting a new place, I can find food and exhibits to see. If I’m downtown with time to spare, I can easily find a place to chill. I can wander around with a decent sense that I haven’t wandered into an uncomfortable part of town. Mass transit systems start to make sense.

I often don’t need my phone for any of these tasks. Many times I won’t even take it out. But knowing it’s there as a fallback gives me the confidence to put myself out there.

7. It Was Harder to Get Work Done

For this past year, I’ve had to do everything on my laptop. That has been both a blessing and a curse.

On one hand, when I was away from my computer, I was free from email and work. But when I sat back down at my computer, it was my time to catch up on everything: personal and work email, news, and blogs alike. As you can imagine, this was quite distracting. Without another device, I could get online using my computer.

With a smartphone, I can now manage email and Slack notifications from my phone. I’ve also started using a writing app that I sync between my phone and my Pixelbook. This way I can write at times when my computer isn’t around, as I’m doing right now.

Having to do everything on a PC meant I was less productive when I sat down to work, and my options were limited when I was away from my computer.

Yes, technically my phone had a built-in camera. But the 2MP shooter on my dumbphone wasn’t worth using for anything other taking snapshots of item I wanted to remember to look up later. Trying to capture memories only left me frustrated I didn’t have a better camera around.

A dumbphone also made it harder to view images that people sent me. I typically had to zoom, and even then, the screen could only deliver pixelated results that hardly represented the picture’s actual quality. And trying to view screenshots was a non-starter.

I don’t take pictures most days, nor do I have any social media accounts to obsessively post photos to. But I still like having a decent camera phone in my pocket for those spontaneous moments I could not have planned ahead for.

I Still Like the Idea of Going Back to a Basic Phone

Unfortunately, the dumbphone options in my area aren’t that great. The flip phones at my local carrier store don’t just look like relics from the past; they function that way too. I like the idea of the Light Phone, but it’s currently sold out and costs more than I’m sure I want to spend.

Smartphones have changed while I was using a dumbphone. They’re more secure than dumb phones. Many of the high-end devices no longer struggle to make it through a full day. Fast charging has also made it much less of an issue when they do. Fingerprint scanners make it easy to quickly check something on a phone without having to first enter a pattern or password one-handed. Android Pie has further reduced the amount of clutter on screen, and my phone now lets me uninstall or disable the overwhelming majority of the pre-installed apps.

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Raymond

February 2, 2019 at 7:28 pm

I didn't read past point #2. THERE ARE TOO MANY ADS IN THIS ARTICLE! And I know how punctuation works. There are too many "red links" for your article to be anything more than an ad. I have a camera, it works fine. I use text more than anything and I don't see a problem with fonts. My data is turned down to zero. I would vastly prefer an old phone. This was written on my primitive PC.

Gee, I very rarely text on my phone (it's probably a couple *months* in between occasions where I will use texting, and it will be SMS). I don't view web pages on my phone, because I simply can't SEE what's on the web-page; smallest device I'll view web pages on is my 10" Android tablet. And if my "friends" can't figure out where they are without a GPS, they're not the sort of people I want to be wasting my time with. I will have "mobile data" disabled on my phone the vast majority of the time, preferring to use wifi at home or family locations, and syncing data I'll need to carry with me. The camera functionality I use as a standby, for when I don't have a REAL camera with me. If I'm on vacation or otherwise am expecting to be taking photos, I bring a proper and capable camera with me.

Essentially I use my "smart"phone as a kneecapped and deficient replacement for my old PalmOS devices. I say deficient, as even now they can't reach the full functionality of my old Sony Clie. About the only thing the "smart"phone has added is the ability to play a variety of audio/music files the Clie never could. Other than that, I use my phone for, you know, making and receiving phone calls (a novel concept I know; using a phone for phone calls).

I agree with many of your points. I carry around a DSLR when I plan on taking photos, I don't particularly enjoy reading webpages on a phone, and while I text more often than you, I'm not a particularly heavy texter. The ability to make phone calls is the primary reason I own a phone. I love the idea of a simple phone that does only a few things, but does them well.

As for "can't figure out where they are without a GPS" -- it's not knowing where you are that's the issue, but getting from where you are to where you want to be if you haven't yet been to your destination enough times to memorize it -- especially in a metropolitan area with hundreds or thousands of street names and intersections. I don't know where you live, but I don't know many people, young or old, who drive to a place they've never been to before (or a route they've never had to take before) without a GPS unless the destination happens to be along a road they already frequent regularly.

You have been spoiled by your years of using smartphones. Everything you say in your article cries out that you do not want a phone that just makes phone calls, you want FEATURES. IOW, a smart phone. So quit dissembling and get yourself a nice iPhone X. :-)

Every mobile phone I've ever owned has had the ability to at least send text messages, so you could say I was spoiled by features long before now. There's still a vast gulf between those devices and today's pocket touchscreen 4K TVs.

I'd be pretty happy with an Android device with everything uninstalled or disabled but the dialer, the messaging app, the camera, and navigation. Unfortunately, even after rooting or flashing a custom ROM, you can only get rid of so much before the system stops you or breaks.

Bertel is an RVA-based writer who has covered consumer tech for over five years. With a BA in History and Government from the College of William and Mary, he is as comfortable helping others understand digital rights and policy as he is reviewing apps.